Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!snorkelwacker!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!cs.utexas.edu!rutgers!cbmvax!cbmehq!cbmger!peterk
From: peterk@cbmger.UUCP (Peter Kittel GERMANY)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.hardware
Subject: Re: Motorola vs Intel (who's faster?)
Keywords: Amiga runs at 3.5 MHZ?
Message-ID: <276@cbmger.UUCP>
Date: 12 Jul 90 07:14:56 GMT
References: <1990Jul10.055108.22796@agate.berkeley.edu> <3942@azure8.UUCP>
Reply-To: peterk@cbmger.UUCP (Peter Kittel GERMANY)
Organization: Commodore Bueromaschinen GmbH, West Germany
Lines: 22

joechung@sandstorm.Berkeley.EDU (Joseph) writes:
>A friend of mine said the other day that Motorola rates its CPU's twice as
>fast.  So in effect, my Amiga's running at a little over 3.5 MHZ.

Don't let them confuse you. The fact is that somewhere in the system you
must have a master crystal oscillator. And this one indeed clocks at a
multifold of the frequency the processor actually runs on. In the Amiga,
this master crystal is (I believe) somewhere around 28 MHz. This is
divided by 4, so that the processor clocks indeed at 7.xx MHz.

More important is, what can a processor do in one of these clock cycles?
Or: how many clock cycles does it need to complete one machine instruction?
And here you have the differences between chips of different producers
and newer versions. So the 68030 is so much faster than the 68000, because
it a) can work at higher clock rates and b) needs fewer clock cycles for
one instruction. And here is also where the wars between Intel and Motorola
start, which brand is more effective in this way. (I don't want to
contribute to this war.)

-- 
Best regards, Dr. Peter Kittel      //     E-Mail to 
Commodore Frankfurt, Germany      \X/      rutgers!cbmvax!cbmger!peterk